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Sunday, May 9, 2010

The Frogs' quest for a sixth consecutive regular-season MWC title hinge on tonight's rubber match against second-place New Mexico after the teams split the first two games by trading 3-2 victories.

TCU took Friday's game by that score with the help by two home runs off the bat of lead-off man Brance Rivera and strong pitching from Matt Purke and ultra-dependable releiver Tyler Lockwood. The Lobos struck back yesterday afternoon, however, with some strong pitching of their own. UNM starter Willy Kesler out-dueled Kyle Winkler with a nearly perfect complete game, giving up just four hits in nine innings. One of those hits, though, was a two-run home run by Matt Curry in the top of the 9th that brought the Frogs to within a run of the Lobos. Winkler pitched very well, too, allowing a total of just seven baserunners in eight innings of work, but took his first loss of the season (and the first for the Frogs' weekend rotation).

That brings us to Game 3, an oddly-scheduled Sunday night game- a rarity in college baseball because the visiting team's travel considerations. Before you go off accusing UNM of bush-league tactics to inconvenience their conference rival, you should know they didn't have much of a choice in the matter because the Lobos share a stadium with the hilariously-named Albuquerque Isotopes (if you don't recognize that as a Simpsons reference, you probably didn't pick up that my name is one, too). Steven Maxwell takes the mound for TCU, and Kevin Toves for the Lobos.

One of the great things about TCU's recent football success is that they're doing things the right way, and that includes making sure to emphasize the student in student-athlete just as much as the other half of the equation. So I was happy to see the story on gofrogs.com this morning regarding the multitude of Frog football players that were awarded degrees at yesterday's graduation ceremony. It included all three of the players that were drafted last month, as well as five players who will play this fall as graduate students- Curtis Clay, Cory Grant, Alex Ibiloye, Kevin Sharples and Jimmy Young.